Orange Devil posted:

It was pretty loving far from okay.

FuzzySlippers posted:

I think people get caught up in nostalgia when thinking of movies (like games) so they remember some old mediocre movie through the lens of their younger less cynical self (looking fondly at its familiar warts) while decrying the mediocre movies of today they can't help but hate.

Ardennes posted:

Maybe the US was just a lot more confident in itself in the 2000s

StashAugustine posted:

It is really funny how it looks better than the later entries in the series

gradenko_2000 posted:

The prequels are just better movies than the later films in general

Delta-Wye posted:

quote:

Following the end of the Gulf War, U.S. soldiers are sent to tie loose ends. The soldiers are bored from the lack of action and throw parties at night. Major Archie Gates, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, is trading sex for stories with a journalist, Cathy Daitch, when he is interrupted by Adriana Cruz, the television reporter he is assigned to escort.

While disarming and searching an Iraqi officer, U.S. Army Reserve Sergeant First Class Troy Barlow, his best friend Private First Class Conrad Vig, and their unit find a map in the officer's anus. Troy goes to Staff Sergeant Chief Elgin to help translate the map. Major Gates appears after tracking down a lead from Adriana. Archie convinces them that the document is a map of bunkers near Karbala containing gold bullion stolen from Kuwait, which they decide to steal in turn. To keep Adriana off his back, Gates sends Specialist Walter Wogeman to aid her on a false lead.

They set off the next day and, among other goods plundered from Kuwait, find the gold, and stumble on the interrogation of Amir Abdullah. As they leave, Amir's wife pleads with them not to abandon the anti-Saddam dissidents. Still, she is executed by the Iraqi Republican Guard. The group decides to free the Iraqi prisoners, triggering a firefight. They pull out just as Iraqi reinforcements arrive, and as they try to evade a CS gas attack, they blunder into a minefield and get separated. Iraqi soldiers capture Troy while a group of rebels rescue the other Americans and take them to their underground hideout. There, Conrad, Chief, and Archie agree to help the rebels and their families reach the Iranian border after they rescue Troy.
Troy is taken back to the bunker and thrown into a room full of Kuwaiti cell phones. He calls his wife on a MicroTAC and tells her to report his location to his local Army Reserve unit. His call is cut short when he is dragged to an interrogation room where he is interrogated by Iraqi Captain Saďd.
The Americans and the rebels go to a band of Iraqi Army deserters, who are persuaded to sell them luxury cars stolen from Kuwait. The vehicles are outfitted as Saddam's entourage in a ruse to scare away the bunker's defenders. After storming the bunker, they free Troy, who spares Saďd, and find more Shi'ite dissidents held in a dungeon. A few of the soldiers who ran away return, and shoot Conrad and Troy. Conrad dies; Troy's lung is punctured, but he survives.

Archie radios Walter and Adriana and arranges transport while the hapless officers in the camp try to locate the trio after getting the message from Troy's wife. Each of the rebels is given a bar of gold, and the rest is buried as they wait for the transport to arrive. The convoy goes to the Iranian border, where the three Americans intend to escort the rebels across to protect them from the Iraqi soldiers guarding the crossing; American officers arrive and stop the group, however, arresting the trio while the rebels are recaptured. Archie offers the buried gold to the American officers in exchange for letting the refugees through. The commanding officer acquiesces to assisting the rebels get into Iran, but still states that charges (of being absent without leave and disobeying orders by contradicting American post-war policy) and courts-martial will be convened against Archie, Troy, and Chief Elgin.

As an epilogue, the film states that the three surviving soldiers (Archie, Troy, and Chief Elgin) are cleared of the charges and honorably discharged, thanks to Adriana's reporting. The epilogue goes on to show that Archie goes to work as a military adviser for Hollywood action films, Chief leaves his airport job to work with Archie, and Troy returns to his wife and baby to run his own carpet store. The stolen gold was returned to Kuwait, which claimed that some was missing, implying that the rebels managed to keep the gold they had been given.

gradenko_2000 posted:

The prequels are just better movies than the later films in general

frozenphil posted:

I'm sorry to hear about your terrible opinion.

Ardennes posted:

It is close, both of them are barely watchable. I would say at least there was interesting or unique parts of the prequels. They at least attempted a stab at politics and the tech was pioneering at the time.

zetamind2000 posted:

no one at disney will ever make the strange decisions lucas made

look at the sand speech, you can't teach that

Lostconfused posted:

Red Letter Media has a pretty good review of Andor, and they are absolutely correct in their prediction of why it's going to suck.

Lostconfused posted:

Red Letter Media has a pretty good review of Andor, and they are absolutely correct in their prediction of why it's going to suck.

D-Pad posted:

What's the tldr on why season 2 is going to suck? Because season one was one of the best star wars thing ever.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Because now that it has a reputation as one of the best Star Wars things ever, Disney executives are going to be all over it, trying to leave their mark. Before, it was beneath their notice, they left it to the creatives. They don't care about the art, they care about success, so they had no reason to get involved in a project that seemed arty and was not a rising star to pin their careers to. Now it is. This is (allegedly) exactly what happened to the Mandalorian behind the scenes.

frozenphil posted:

The US will lose WW3 because our CGI sucks now.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Orange Devil, you tried to warn me, but I was not prepared for “at most 20% of Germans supported the Nazis and the courageous SPD continued resisting throughout the war years”

Votskomit posted:

The underlying system that outsourced and destroyed much of the local FX industry is doing the same thing to the ability of the USA to conduct a war.

Marvel actually has access to the technical skills needed to make decent CGI and FX, but they don't plan their films well. They keep making last minute changes and putting immense pressure on CGI teams to produce stuff at short notice under extremely difficult conditions, which lowers the quality of the CGI a lot.

Seeing these patterns repeat across industries assures me that the USA will lose ww3.

FuzzySlippers posted:

Lately I'm so sick of American bullshit I can't watch much from Hollywood because there is always something annoying the gently caress out of me so I bail. I thought half-drunk I might enjoy the flight scenes from Masters of Air but I didn't get through the first episode. I think people are being way too kind to Band of Brothers which had plenty of its own dumb poo poo. You can't make an honest American big budget movie/show about any war. Back in this golden era both Saving Private Ryan (absent the famous opening) and Thin Red Line sucked. Full Metal Jacket is a lovely adaptation of a better book. etc

FuzzySlippers posted:

Lately I'm so sick of American bullshit I can't watch much from Hollywood because there is always something annoying the gently caress out of me so I bail. I thought half-drunk I might enjoy the flight scenes from Masters of Air but I didn't get through the first episode. I think people are being way too kind to Band of Brothers which had plenty of its own dumb poo poo. You can't make an honest American big budget movie/show about any war. Back in this golden era both Saving Private Ryan (absent the famous opening) and Thin Red Line sucked. Full Metal Jacket is a lovely adaptation of a better book. etc

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

The Americans saw like 4 Tigers from Normandy to the end of the war, and yet they'll claim credit until the end of time.

Pidgin Englishman posted:

The highly elite and most terrifying western panzer division "tanks full of kids"

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

The Americans' greatest enemy, that almost threw them into the sea on three separate occasions (Gela, Salerno, Anzio) was "Pet Project Parachute-Tank Division of Fat Drug Addict".

Lostconfused posted:

Let United States wallow in the mythological past as the present crumbles around them. So what if they decided to take the path of past empires.

Orange Devil posted:

Nothing bad ever came from people clamping desperately to a mythologized past.

Orange Devil posted:

Nothing bad ever came from people clamping desperately to a mythologized past.